$100 Room Challenge Deck Refresh Week 3

All of the dismantling, cleaning and painting is done! Next step is to recover the sling chairs. I decided to go with RED! to match the furniture on my back deck, with the intention being that once we find our next home, it will all go on our new massive deck!! – here’s hoping ; ) This is what the furniture on my back deck looks like:

My Other Deck

A pretty good sized deck for a condo. And it’s one of two!

I talked to the nice people at the fabric store, and they advised against using anything with too loose of a weave. So I chose an outdoor fabric with a tight weave. In fact I ended up going with an all weather fabric, made of olefin. which is pretty much indestructible, except you can’t really iron it, as I learned – whoops! In the past, I made the mistake of using regular fabrics on an outdoor project, and it doesn’t last long in the sun. It looked good when I made it, as you can see here. But I will be recovering it in the future. It’s definitely worth the additional cost, up front.

Chalk this one up to experience

This fabric and outdoor thread cost $45 Cdn. And when you are measuring, USE CHALK! You can get some here: Clover Triangle Tailors Chalk, White I can’t tell you how many times, I have said “I’ll just use a pen” and then ended up screwing up, and had an ink line on my fabric. Go buy some chalk 🙂 So you don’t have to buy more fabric 🙂

Measure Twice. Cut once.

I hung onto the original fabric pieces until I was done sewing, just in case I needed to re-check the measurements. You know what they say, measure twice and cut once 🙂 No real sewing skills required. Basically this is a 17″ x 44* (finished measurements) rectangle with a seam allowance. No need to seam finish the edges, since it will NEVER go in the wash.

First I did one of the footstools. They were pretty easy to do, as the fabric guides were removable from the frame

All the pretty pieces

which allowed the fabric to be fed through the channels,

Feeding the cable through the fabric. But never mind that, check out the artwork on my nails!! 🙂

Easy to stretch the fabric on the footstools by just screwing in the guides.

Then the guides could be screwed into the frame, which drew the fabric tight. These were very easy to do.

The chairs however, were a different story… It took a few tries to figure out how to do this and get the fabric tight. After a couple of tries this is the way that worked the best. Since the frames were solid and the fabric guides were attached, in order to get the fabric as tight as it needed to be, I unscrewed the frames as below

If you unscrew the braces all on one side, you won’t have any leverage when you are pulling it into place.

Then feed the fabric through the guides, and because it is connected alternately, it allows for some leverage when pulling the fabric tight, because it needs to be stretched very tight and it takes a bit of pulling to get the braces back into place. Stand on the bottom piece and pull up until the brace pops in and then use a hammer to tap it into place.There may be some grunting involved. this is completely normal 🙂

Step on it! No, really, step on it, and pull up to pop the brace into place – Hey, that rhymes:)

Yay! The chairs are recovered! Here’s a sneak peak, of what it will look like all together. I will save the rest for next week. Besides there are a few more pieces that need to come together before we are done here.

Sneak Peak!!!! Stay tuned for the full reveal next week!!!

Costs:

Tarp: Dollar store $4

Paint: Lowes $9 x 2=$18

Fabric: Fabricland $45

Total to date: $67 Cdn x .75 = $50.25 U.S.

Be sure to check out all the other bloggers below! See you next week for the big reveal!!

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I seriously can’t wait to see your final reveal!! That fabric is so gorgeous and it’s going to look so great on the deck! Great job with the chairs/footstool. I never would’ve had that kind of patience.